You could say we're in the honeymoon phase of an AI PC boom, with AI chip technologies and software in a state of rapid and perpetual improvement in laptops. At least that was the vibe I got at HP's Imagine AI event in New York City last week, where HP personnel were talking up the current AI PC technologies and teasing what's to come in the AI PC space later this year. "This is one of the biggest, most dynamic inflection points I've ever seen in my career. There's stuff on the front burner in the AI category coming soon, even later this year, including even more AI performance in consumer laptops and workstations," said Alex Thatcher, senior director of cloud client and AI experience at HP. "We're also going to see big innovations around AI PC security and you're also going to see a lot of investment in AI PC software. That's AI software development HP is doing in house, but also work we're doing with our independent software vendors (ISVs)," he said.

The Daily Mail would be horrified if it knew what it had spawned. Back in 2021, when news broke of Matt Hancock's lockdown-breaking affair, the tabloid printed a floorplan of the health secretary's office, complete with details such as "queen painting" and "kiss door". For most people, it was unnecessary detail added to one of the most nauseating moments in modern politics. But for Dan Douglas, a 39-year-old from London, it served as artistic inspiration. "It reminded me of a map from a video game," he says.

At a Labour party conference-adjacent event in September, The World Transformed, Jeremy Corbyn was pictured waving an arm in front of an arcade cabinet bearing the words Thatcher's Techbase. The game – a modified version of 1994's famous infernal shooter, Doom II – sees players hunting down a resurrected, cyborg version of the former prime minister in a labyrinthine fortress. The images kicked off a minor media storm. "Pictured: Jeremy Corbyn plays video game that lets players kill Margaret Thatcher," said The Telegraph; the photos were featured in the Daily Mail, the Express and the Times. They even appeared on Have I Got News for You. Jim Purvis, the game's creator – who took and later tweeted the photos – was somewhat surprised.

Information, data, and choice continue to expand in exponential ways leading to a constant and never-ending sense of drowning. If there was too much to know yesterday, there's more today, and tomorrow will have yet more. There is no way to catch up. And yet the promise of optimized decision making in the face of this overwhelming choice is as alluring as ever. All indicators suggest the availability of a perfect selection, one that does more than merely providing a good outcome.

MPs from the House of Commons inquiry into fake news were warned last week of a new AI technology that is about to change the world, and not for the better. "We're rapidly moving into an era where the Russians, or any other adversary, can create our public figures saying or doing things that are disgraceful or highly corrosive to public trust," Edward Lucas, the senior vice president of the Centre for European Policy Analysis told MPs. "And we're not remotely ready for this." Lucas was talking about so-called deepfakes, which he described as "audio and video that look and sound like the real person, saying something that that person never has". Less than three months ago, producing such videos was a laborious process requiring a video editor, vast amounts of reference footage and years of experience. But in the first few months of this year, the technology has exploded into public availability.

They will make your drinks, but they won't listen to your problems. Robot bartenders have made their way to the Las Vegas Strip -- evidence perhaps that Skynet is closer to becoming self-aware and will have a convenient place to take the edge off. Bar owner Rino Armeni swears this isn't yet another move to replace human beings. "No, no, no," he said gamely and with a laugh. Though, it should be noted, the fountains have not joined the labor force and been retrained to become, say, baristas.

Life has been busy for the stars of "Sherlock" since the series premiered in 2010, with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss applying new London style and contemporary quirks to Arthur Conan Doyle's famous consulting detective. Its fourth season -- there have been breaks -- begins Sunday on PBS' "Masterpiece: Mystery!" Martin Freeman, the series' Dr. John Watson, has gone from a guy you might have seen on the British version of "The Office" or in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to playing Bilbo Baggins in three "Hobbit" movies and the hapless Lester Nygaard in the first season of FX's "Fargo," and hosting "Saturday Night Live." Benedict Cumberbatch, its Sherlock (also in the "Hobbit" movies, as the voice of Smaug) has, among other things, played Khan in "Star Trek Into Darkness," the title role in "Doctor Strange," codebreaker Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game" and Richard III in BBC's "The Hollow Crown" Shakespeare cycle; sung "Comfortably Numb" with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall; and has become something of an international, official hot guy. Conan Doyle wrote 60 Holmes stories, but the world has deemed that insufficient, and many other hands have filled out the tale. Holmes is a useful mix of specific qualities and scant details -- an attitude, occupation and method as much as a full-fleshed, full-fledged character, and so familiar that even some characters not called Sherlock Holmes, like Hugh Laurie's Dr. House on "House," are recognizably him.

Health Catalyst has created Healthcare.ai, a website that offers free open source predictive analytics software for hospitals and other healthcare organizations. "Wherever you have a data set that you pull together, you can create a model based on that by using these tools," said Levi Thatcher, director of data science at Health Catalyst. Machine learning and predictive analytics to improve health outcomes has so far been limited to an elite group of data scientists, mostly in the nation's top academic medical centers, he pointed out. Healthcare.ai – open source predictive analytics software – is part of a mission to make machine learning accessible to the thousands of healthcare professionals with only basic technical skills, but who share an interest in using the technology to improve patient care, Thatcher explained. By making its central repository of proven machine learning algorithms freely available, Healthcare.ai opens the doors to a large, diverse group of technical healthcare professionals to quickly use machine learning tools to build accurate models.

Health Catalyst has created Healthcare.ai, a website that offers free open source predictive analytics software for hospitals and other healthcare organizations. "Wherever you have a data set that you pull together, you can create a model based on that by using these tools," said Levi Thatcher, director of data science at Health Catalyst. Machine learning and predictive analytics to improve health outcomes has so far been limited to an elite group of data scientists, mostly in the nation's top academic medical centers, he pointed out. Healthcare.ai – open source predictive analytics software – is part of a mission to make machine learning accessible to the thousands of healthcare professionals with only basic technical skills, but who share an interest in using the technology to improve patient care, Thatcher explained. By making its central repository of proven machine learning algorithms freely available, Healthcare.ai opens the doors to a large, diverse group of technical healthcare professionals to quickly use machine learning tools to build accurate models.

It's an adage that one should not speak ill of the dead. But when conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly died last week, I was among the many liberal writers who didn't hesitate to call her a hatemonger. Schlafly, who built her 40-year career on stoking intolerance, was a vocal supporter of segregation and discrimination in housing, voting, and the workplace. She pushed to make anti-gay activism a core feature of the conservative movement. Even as the national consensus evolved toward greater rights for many Americans who had once been marginalized, Schlafly remained staunchly opposed to progress.